Re: LANG: Object Sharing

Jay Carlson (nop@ccs.neu.edu)
Thu, 16 Jun 94 15:55:37 -0400


> I think the point about VRML being a mark-up language is important. This
> needs to be easy to use for everyone if there is to be much use of it.
> (Viz. HTML, and its explosive growth.)

>From what I've seen of VRML, it's not really a markup language at all---what
is it marking up? Perhaps what you're asking for is a semantic,
non-presentational description of objects in 3-space, but that's harder to get
good hype for than something that's vaguely associated with the Web.

> MOO is a good example of how inheritance can make the construction of
> complex VR objects a relatively simple task, and one that any user can
> learn without too much trouble. (MOO users get their 'builder bit' and
> can create complex objects, before they are even _allowed_ to program
> on most if not all MOOs.)

I don't find construction of complex VR objects in MOO all that easy. Good
building in MOO takes a *lot* of time, even with the tools I have available to
me. MOO could do a lot better, and VRML systems had better.

I think this is a good thing to learn from both MOO and HTML: provide strong
authoring tools from the beginning.

Jay Carlson
nop@io.com nop@ccs.neu.edu

Flat text is just *never* what you want. ---stephen p spackman